People Take Warning! box set comes out tomorrow :: Music News :: Articles

There was a time, before 24-hour cable news, when happenings traveled by song. People Take Warning! Murder Ballads & Disaster Songs 1913-1938, out tomorrow (Sept. 25) via Tompkin’s Square Records, allows those of us in the PDA era a glimpse into the wireless-less past. The box set features 70 tracks (including 30 never before released) that chronicle the events of the day: from the famous sinking of the Titanic to the now-forgotten murder of the Lawson family.

The set features songs by Charlie Patton, Ernest Stoneman, Furry Lewis, Charlie Poole and Uncle Dave Macon, among others. Produced by Grammy winning team of Christopher King and Henry Sapoznik, the collection also boasts an introduction written by Tom Waits. In fact, maybe Waits can explain all this better with an excerpt from said introduction:

"In the late 1920's and early 1930's, the Depression gripped the Nation. It was a time when songs were tools for living. A whole community would turn out to mourn the loss of a member and to sow their songs like seeds. This collection is a wild garden grown from those seeds."

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